1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to devices used to move trailers about when they are not attached to a towing vehicle. Specifically, it relates to small lightweight portable trailer moving devices operated by an individual.
2. Discussion of Prior Art
Unless they can be driven to the desired spot and simply dropped from the trailer hitch, trailers usually need to be moved after being separated from their towing vehicle. Sometimes the task might be as simple as moving the trailer from the street to the far end of the driveway because the driver lacks the ability to skillfully back a trailer up. Another example: where municipal ordinances allow continuous parking of unattached trailers on the public streets, it is usually necessary to move the trailer at least once a week and sometimes more. One cannot always find a spot near the house, and backing a trailer into a parallel parking space is difficult at best and more often than not, impossible.
Aside from the need for a device for moving trailers in the above situations, it is often necessary to move a trailer, any kind of trailer, around in various situations such as a utility trailer or a horse trailer around the premises, or a construction trailer on a job site. This often is done in cramped areas such as driveways, parking spaces, parking lots, stables, and the like. Bringing a horse trailer to a fair for a show or a rodeo can often be a problem as is bringing a trailer loaded with the owner""s wares to a swap meet or other kind of outdoor sales event, at which spaces are very tight and many other vehicles and people are around. When such situations exist, it is frequently found that a trailer must be squeezed into a space. The inventor witnessed such a problem while writing this application: His neighbor across the street was having his house upgraded. One of the small contractors he hired had a box trailer about 12 feet long and packed with tools and gear. Each day he had difficulty in positioning this portable workshop. One day the only way he could do so was to drive into the driveway and he could not pull any further than just even with the sidewalk. As a result, his rear door, which doubled as a ramp, totally blocked the sidewalk all day long, making pedestrians noticeably unhappy. With this Tug, he could have left his truck in the street and put the trailer anywhere, including the lawn.
Disabled persons will appreciate having a trailer mover that can be used anywhere.
Outside of the city there are many times a trailer must be moved, such as backing a large boat into a spot at a motel with cars on either side, and with travel trailers at campgrounds that do not have drive-through sites, but require backing in. Many natural campground sites have hills, trees, etc. that must be circumvented. There is where the moving is most difficult. It is rare to see a person drive into a campground and leave their trailer connected to the towing vehicle for any length of time. Even going into town to get groceries is reason enough to leave the trailer parked if it is a large one and the terrain is difficult.
Such tasks and many others require some other means of moving the trailer.
At present, there are but three kinds of devices suitable for the tasks. Most trailers are equipped with a front swivel or caster wheel which is mounted on the lower telescoping tube of a screw jack attached to the tongue of the trailer just behind the hitch coupler. When the trailer is being towed, this front caster wheel is either elevated out of contact with the ground or it is removed from the jack, or both. When parking the trailer, the jack is lowered to bring the caster wheel into supporting contact with the ground. To move the trailer by hand without the aid of its towing vehicle, the trailer jack is lowered by means of its crank, thus raising the tongue to release the trailer from the vehicle. The trailer is then supported entirely by its main wheels and the front caster wheel. The trailer may then be maneuvered into a desired parking position by pushing and/or pulling on the trailer in such a way as to roll the trailer on its main wheels and caster wheel. This method is laborious, difficult and time consuming and could pose serious consequences for persons in poor physical health or persons who are simply weak. Many travel trailer users are seniors to whom employing such means as above is, in many cases, out of the question.
One inconvenience, or aggravation of such built in trailer jacks is the fact that they are made with a screw that has a large mechanical advantage. As a result, it takes a great many turns to raise or lower it only a short amount. Often there is a differential in heights between the location of the trailer tongue when it is on the towing vehicle and where it needs to be when it is parked or when it is hooked up to a device to move it. It can be an arduous task to crank that distance when one is trying to move the trailer or secure the campsite. It can take 100 revolutions or more to get it where it is wanted, which can be strenuous for many people.
Another means of moving a trailer independently of its towing vehicle is a hand-powered dolly. Such dollies generally have a pair of wheels mounted on a frame with a long handle. A cross bar or beam rises up and terminates in a trailer hitch ball. To use such a device, it is tipped forward, lowering the ball, rocked under the trailer coupler, and then rocked back to raise the tongue, and the latch on the coupler is tripped to secure it to the ball. It is then possible to roll the trailer around by pushing and pulling on the handle and turning it. These are an improvement over the crank-up trailer jack with a caster wheel, but still requite great exertion in many situations and again, pose a health threat to certain persons, this inventor included. They are also generally too large to be easily stored in a trailer or a car trunk without some disassembly. And there is always the possibility with these types of devices that the user might forget to lock the tongue to the ball so that if the dolly rocks forward, under the right conditions, the trailer could break loose and cause great damage or injury.
The sole other kind known to the inventor is taught in U. S. Pat. No. 3,439,764 to Kimball (1969) commercially known as the xe2x80x9cPower Caster.xe2x80x9d It is a dolly powered by a 120-volt AC motor and requires a 100xe2x80x2 extension cord. Both the hand powered variety of dollies above and the xe2x80x9cPower Casterxe2x80x9d by Kimball have significant limitations. Depending on the weight of the trailer, the hand-powered dolly requires a level of strength that not every person has. And using a hand-powered dolly on hilly or rough terrain is generally out of the question.
Among its other limitations, the Kimball device and its clone, the xe2x80x9cPowermoverxe2x80x9d precludes such operations as moving a trailer on a public street in all but the most narrowly defined circumstances, and is significantly limited in most other situations as well, including but not limited-to the 100-foot restriction of the power cord, the dangers of a publicly exposed electrical cordxe2x80x94particularly on the street, and the tasks of finding an AC receptacle or of using a portable generator if one is traveling.
My Tug is the answer in all situations, including at wilderness campgrounds or, for that matter, in the wilderness itself. It is completely independent from a power cord and therefore can be used anywhere a trailer can go, significantly increasing both the number and the nature of places the trailer owner can bring his trailer, and also increases the activities the user can engage in when he gets there if he uses the accessory cart that is a part of this invention.
It is uniquely different in almost every way from prior art powered by AC motors with all of their limitations. This is because it operates on small lightweight, fast-charging batteries with specialized power curves, uses high RPM motors with large gear reduction assemblies, is guided by a Joystick controller at the end of an electronics cable that need not be any longer than four feet, or alternatively by wireless radio frequency control that allows the operator to stand at the side of the trailer several feet away from it or even at the far end and observe just where and how the rear of the trailer is moving. The operator could actually stand on the trailer""s roof and operate the Tug if desired.
The invention is extremely maneuverable, being able to rotate 360 degrees within its own length and not requiring a bulky, motion-limiting, hard-to-store handle to use in operation and steering. Additionally, it has a gimbaled feature that allows its use on irregular terrain without traction loss and potential damage to the trailer or itself. Some of its other features are a unique Free-wheeling clutch design and a self-parking D-ring on a component pin in the clutch design. It incorporates circuitry to allow charging of the batteries by AC or DC from other sources, including solar panels. Charging is done with batteries installed, but its twin battery packs can be removed in just seconds to lighten it if needed for lifting or carrying by handles incorporated therein. The invention includes an assembly that uses an attachment post to be used in lieu of a trailer""s built-in crank jack, and the post can be raised or lowered rapidly without arduous cranking.
In the preferred embodiment shown here, the Tug""s overall size is approximately 24 inches wide, 13 inches high and 14 inches front to back, making it small enough to be stored in many places. It can also be made smaller with only slight variations. It could be reduced in overall size by use of smaller components. It could retain the components envisioned here but omit the side cavities outside the Motor Mounting Plates 246LandR making it about six inches narrower, and add space to the front and rear for the components displaced. Its overall weight, depending on the weight of the battery packs, is less than 100 pounds and can be lightened by approximately 37 pounds by completely removing the battery packs. In some instances, such as where the Tug will not be used for purposes other than parking a trailer, it may be lightened even further by utilizing even lighter, lower capacity battery packs. And importantly, it is able to move medium sized trailers up inclines of 10 percent. Heavier trailers can be moved simply by increasing some of the component sizes, strengths, and ratios.
A fixed handle, such as the one in Kimball, is required on that art because there is no other way to make the device turn. It has a rigidly attached handle which is used to steer the device and to roll it back and forth from its storage area to where it will be used. A handle that is fixed to the dolly as in Kimball has several notable limitations. Moving a trailer either forward or backward in a straight line using a device that has a handle fixed to it requires that the operator stand or walk on the trailer""s longitudinal axis because these devices attach to the trailer at the trailer""s crank jack, which is on that axis. Moving the trailer forward, that is, hitch end first, requires the operator to be walking backward and looking over his shoulder. Moreover, since he must be on the longitudinal axis for maneuverability, he can only move the coupler (the part that attaches to the ball hitch) as close to a wall or fence as the length of the handle and then must step out of the way to get the handle against the wall or other object. In order to get the coupler right up to the fence, it is necessary to engage in some arduous xe2x80x9cback-and-forthingxe2x80x9d which still cannot totally accomplish the task. In fact, without the user backing up, the trailer cannot be moved in a forward direction at all with a dolly with a handle because the dolly is sitting directly under the trailer tongue and the tongue prevents swinging the dolly handle under it. Even just moving the trailer away from the towing vehicle without first moving the towing vehicle away, requires first moving the trailer tongue backwards at an angle to one side until the handle can be swung into alignment with the longitudinal axis. This maneuvering could be described as xe2x80x9ctackingxe2x80x9d away from the spot, to use a sailor""s term. Thus it can be seen that with a dolly that must be attached to the trailer""s own built-in jack post, and with a rigidly attached handle, the possible movements are not only considerably limited by obstructions such as walls or fences but also by the obstruction of the trailer tongue itself and such a device cannot perform certain maneuvering operations at all. With a long handle slanting upward to the user, it is impossible to swing it anywhere inside the edge of the trailer tongue. This removes from its operational compass an arc of between 45 and 90 degrees, depending on the trailer. This disadvantage can be overcome by using the dolly in reverse, but not without extra effort and time and the problems already mentioned.
In its primary embodiment, my invention does not require the use of a handle to steer it and does not have a handle at all, yet it can rotate 360 degrees around the trailer jack post or around the Post that is part of this invention. With the control being achieved through the use of a Joystick control device on a short cord, or one with R/F wireless connection, totally unlimited maneuverability is achieved. In an extreme example of its maneuverability, the trailer could be moved tongue-first into an enclosed storage space only two or three inches wider than itself. Storing a trailer tongue-first in a garage is not a common activity, but there can be occasions in which such kind of maneuvering would be necessary.
With this Tug I have invented, which uses battery power, a user can pull into a campground late at night, and rather than going through the laborious, difficult, and noisy routine of backing the trailer into a tight space while his assistant shouts directions at him, sometimes hysterically, or rousing the campground manager to secure access to AC current for the prior art device, or starting up a sufficiently high output and generally noisy generator, (Power Caster and Power Mover require 8.3 amps) he can simply hook it up to this invention in less than five minutes and then move it quickly and silently into the desired spot with little or no help from another person.
Additionally, with one embodiment of the controlling device of this invention, the user can actually stand at the back of the trailer where he or she can make sure it does not hit anything while operating the invention with the use of wireless technology while it is attached to the front of the trailer. This and other uses to be shown in this application illustrate that new and unexpected results are achieved with this invention, particularly as a result of the use of batteries as the power source, but also as a result of other new features which make this invention operable in situations when the prior art would not be operable.
In only a few of the above cases, a motorized dolly connected by an extension cord to 120-V AC could be the answer to moving a trailer around when needed without the use of a large motor vehicle. But it is definitely not an answer for moving the trailer about on the street unless the spot is right in front of the house, and it is definitely a very limited answer at camp grounds that do not have electricity and at wilderness areas unless the owner has a high output gasoline-powered generator that can generate the kind of amperage needed. And generators become problematic if there are other people about who are sleeping, plus the sound from such a generator in such a wilderness area would be greatly frowned upon.
The use of small, high output rechargeable batteries, high rpm motors with large reduction ratios, and other features described herein, produce new and unexpected results, and greatly expand the possibilities of trailer ownership. Additionally, by virtue of these features, this invention has uses beyond the movement of trailers that are towed by motor vehicles as will be revealed herein.